More trouble for international fliers as Air India takes shocking decision to...., suspends services on...
More trouble for international fliers as Air India takes shocking decision to...., suspends services on...
Grappling with disruptions, Air India took another major decision and said it will cut 38 international flights per week and suspend services on three overseas routes between June 21 and July 15. The detailed announcement comes a day after the carrier said it would temporarily reduce flights operated with wide-body planes by 15 per cent.
The Tata Group-owned airline, grappling with disruptions following the fatal plane crash on June 12 in Ahmedabad, said the objective of reducing flights on 18 international routes is to restore schedule stability and minimise last-minute inconvenience to passengers.
'These reductions will be effective from June 21, 2025, and last until at least 15 July 2025,' the airline said in a statement.
Routes suspended
Services will be suspended on Delhi-Nairobi, Amritsar-London (Gatwick) and Goa (Mopa)-London (Gatwick) till July 15.
While the Delhi-Nairobi route has four flights per week, the Amritsar-London (Gatwick) and Goa (Mopa)-London (Gatwick) routes each have three flights a week, according to the airline.
Less number of flights on…
Besides, flights will be reduced on 18 international routes connecting cities in North America, Europe, Australia and the Far East.
The routes in North America, which will see reduced frequencies, are Delhi-Toronto, Delhi-Vancouver, Delhi-San Francisco, Delhi-Chicago and Delhi-Washington.
The routes in Europe with reduced flight services include Delhi-London Heathrow, Bengaluru-London Heathrow, Amristsar-Birmingham and Delhi-Birmingham, Delhi-Paris, Delhi-Milan, Delhi-Copenhagen, Delhi-Vienna and Delhi-Amsterdam.
Similarly, services on Delhi-Melbourne, Delhi-Sydney, Delhi-Tokyo Haneda and Delhi-Seoul (Incheon) have also been reduced as part of the revised schedule.
Air India's apologises
Earlier in the day, Air India CEO and Managing Director Campbell Wilson in a message to flyers said that as a confidence-building measure, the airline has elected to continue enhanced pre-flight safety checks on its Boeing 787 fleet and, as an added measure, its Boeing 777 aircraft for the time being.
Given the time these additional checks will consume and the potential impact on schedules, Air India has decided to reduce its international wide-body flights by around 15 per cent starting June 20, through to at least mid-July, Wilson said.
On Thursday, Air India again apologised to the passengers affected by these curtailments.
'Regrettably, the time required to perform these enhanced safety checks, along with the application of extra caution, external factors like airspace closures in Iran and the Middle East as well as night-time restrictions at some international airports, along with normal airline technical issues, has led to a higher-than-usual number of cancellations on our long-haul network in the past few days,' the Air India chief said in his message.
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